Jason Lunn & Andy Baddeley

Finishing fourth and second in the men's mile at the New Balance Games this past Saturday, Lunn and Baddeley talk about their upcoming seasons

Jason Lunn, who's won USATF titles outdoors in the 1500 in 2003 and indoors in the mile in 2002 and the 1500 in 2003, ran 3:58.90 for fourth place in the elite men's mile at the New Balance Games at the New Balance Track and Field Center at the Armory in New York on Saturday. Lunn, a Stanford graduate who's lately been living in Boulder, Colorado (where he was born in 1974), was fourth in the 1500 in the U.S. Olympics trials in 2000 and fifth in 2004. He'll be in the mile at the Reebok Boston Indoor Games this Saturday.

Runner's World Daily: Was the New Balance Games mile your first race of the 2006 season?Jason Lunn: Yes. I rabbited last week in Seattle where a couple of guys ran 3:58. I was just rabbiting 1200 meters there.

RWD: You've been in Boulder, but you mentioned heading back to Palo Alto for ten days for some recent training.JL: Yeah. I got back from Palo Alto last Sunday. I did some pretty good workouts out there and saw my coach (Frank Gagliano). He'd come out to Boulder in early December.

RWD: What are you reasons for being in Boulder?JL: I'm getting my MBA (at the University of Colorado). This is my last semester. I graduate in April. I wanted to get out of Palo Alto a little bit. I'd been there for about nine years and got kind of stagnant, so I thought moving to Boulder, nearer my family and getting an MBA would be fine.

RWD: Who do you work out with in Boulder?JL: I haven't worked out with anybody. Adam (Goucher) is now out in Portland. I run with Steve Slattery every once in awhile, but that's about it.

RWD: Have you found it difficult to be a master's candidate and try and be an elite runner at the same time?JL: No (laughs). Not an MBA. Not at CU. It's a little bit different story. I haven't had a problem. Last year was kind of a mentally difficult year for me because of missing the Olympic team by .1 (a tenth of a second), and then just trying to get back too quickly I got injured, with my Achilles and my knee. I just couldn't get back into rhythm. Last year, I trained six weeks for USA outdoors--three weeks of base, two weeks of track work, one week of taper. This year, I'm actually running well and running consistently. I actually hope for an indoor PR, like next week, like 3:55, 3:54. I feel really good (his indoor PR is 3:55.49).

RWD: Are you interested in going to the World Indoor Championships?JL: Oh yeah, I definitely want to. I think I can run real well and compete real well at Worlds, too. I just need to get some racing underneath me, because last year I didn't race any indoors and raced very few outdoor meets. So I just need to get back into the rhythm of racing.

RWD: In 2005, races like the NCAA final produced a lot of fast times by young people, and Chris Lukezic did well, making it to the Worlds. What does it mean to you that you're not going to be running anymore against "the usual gang of idiots," as MAD Magazine so eloquently put it?JL: (Laughs) They don't know how, I race, too, right? That fits in pretty well. No, I've raced against (Rob) Myers and Lukezic a few times over the years, so I know how those guys are. I know enough to get ahead of some people, and there are some people I can run behind. I know the usual suspects.

RWD: Perhaps no one in your position can think this way, but most people think of Bernard Lagat and Alan Webb as the top two guys in the 1500 and mile in the U.S., with everyone else looking for third place at this point. What are your thoughts on that?JL: It's hard for me to think that way, because, yes, I'm beaten them all before. Of course, we've all beaten each other before. I guess I just never really have that attitude. I know that if I get really fit and I do the stuff I need to do, then I can compete well with those guys. I just need to do it consistently and do it well.

RWD: Your college career overlapped with Lagat's, right? You'd see him at Pac-10s.JL: Yeah, Pac-10s. And at NCAAs, I was third and he was fourth indoors one year. We overlapped a lot, actually. He killed me in cross country, though.

RWD: Do you believe you have to start thinking about getting "A" standards out of the way very early, like by May of this year, so it's not an issue later on for the 2007 World Championships?JL: Yeah, definitely. That would be a goal, but not a high pressure goal, to do it this year. I've done that standards chasing thing. It's horrible. It's awful. You may as well just get it out of the way. You put pressure on yourself, and you're looking at every single 100 and every single lap that goes by. It's really tough to do.

RWD: You rarely venture into distances other than the 1500 or mile. Do you have any interest in doing so?JL: I have no interest at all in the 5K. But the 800's still my favorite event. I ventured into the 3000 once in 2004. I ran 7:47. I can run well in that event. But there's no way I'd ever do a 5K. I don't have the mental capacity for it.

RWD: The Boston Indoor Games mile field sounds like a very good but also a very close field, where nobody's head-and-shoulders above the rest.JL: That's what it seems like to me. It seems like a good race to go out there, and if the rabbit's good and strings us out, we can run fast. No 3:50 or 3:51 type times, but 3:53, 3:54, I could see that going on.Andy Baddeley, 23, of Great Britain ran 3:58.23 to take second to Elkanah Angwenyi in the elite men's mile at the New Balance Games in New York Saturday. Baddeley is from Wirral, near Liverpool, and now resides in Twickendam, England and competes for Harrow AC. A Cambridge University graduate with a degree in aerospace engineering, he has run 3:36.43 for 1500 meters and 3:56.13 for the mile. He was the British Universities 5000-meter champion in 2005. He was second in the 1500 at the British AAA Championships (akin to the USATFs) in 2004 and 2005. Baddeley has competed twice in the World Cross Country 4K, taking 85th place in 2005. He will run the 1500 for England at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne.

Runner's World Daily: You went through the half in about 2:01 (at the New Balance Games) and no one was within two seconds of you, even though there were reports that a 1:57 opener had been requested. Were you surprised you had no one come after you?Andy Baddeley: I thought everybody knew what the pace was, and in my case, we'd come a long way to race. The idea was whatever the pace was, whatever the other guys did, I was going to go hard. That was always the plan. It was a little bit daunting. I heard the commentator say "they're closing you down, this is a brave run." Oh yeah...I've only got one place to go from here.

RWD: Was this your first indoor race in the U.S?AB: I raced a few years ago in some college matches against the Ivy Leagues. But yeah, it's my first serious race. It's actually only my third or fourth indoor race ever.

RWD: What was the selection process for England's 1500 contingent for the Commonwealth Games?AB: We had our Trials the summer of 2005. The race is so early, in the Australian summer in March, that we couldn't have an outdoor Trials in February (2006). It was the first one at the Trials, and then two discretionary places (picked) at the end of the season, and I was given the first discretionary place.

RWD: You don't have a highly competitive university track system in Britain like exists in the U.S., do you?AB: It's not the same. I ran competitively when I was at university, but the level of athletics is not the same. Our university championships were very low level compared to the NCAA. In fact, the NCAAs here are probably bigger than our Trials for the World Champs. But when I finished university, I started training full-time, really. So I wasn't really serious before that.

RWD: Are you just in the U.S. for this one race?AB: It was my first for New Balance (he is now contracted to the company through 2007). I came over for this, and I'm going back and racing in Glasgow next Saturday. It's an international meet--Great Britain versus Russia, Sweden, and some other teams.

RWD: We'd heard that your high-level indoor experience is mainly in the 3000.AB: My two indoor races last year were both 3Ks. The first one was our Trials for European Indoors (he was second in 7:58.47). The second was the European Indoors (he did not advance out of his opening heat). Those were my only races indoors.

RWD: You'd had World Cross Country experience. Did you find that at that level, in the shorter 4K, it's hell-bent from the get-go?AB: Last year, it was on a hard course (the terrain was hard) that was quick. And the first 400 or 500 meters was straight, on something like cinders. I can't have ran over 60 seconds for that first 400 meters, and I was at back.

RWD: You're only 23 and haven't had heavy training loads behind you. It sounds like you have reason to believe you've got a lot of room for improvement.AB: I hope so. That's why I'm doing what I'm doing at the moment. Having graduated, I could have gone and done a job and earned money that way. But now that I'm running, I'll give it everything I've got.